"For reasons both legal and moral, the onus is on the schools to make their admissions criteria more transparent - not to
use them as fig leaves for
excluding some students simply because they happen to be Asian."
(Emphasis added by S. B.)

"Quotas to
keep minorities out of schools were once considered racist and unfair, but colleges think it is just fine as long as they
discriminate against the right minorities." (Added
by S. B.: Who are "the right minorities?" Us, stupid!)

It ended with:

". .
. But now universities . . . are engaging in
racial discrimination in order to produce what they regard as a pleasing bouquet of
race and ethnicity. Is that a good enough reason to
deny individuals a fair chance? I don't think so. And I suspect
that courts will feel the same way."
(Emphasis added by S. B.)

As individual orgs and as a group, you have done good things for
our community.However, in the college
admissions issue, you have been dead wrong. Even now, you filed amicus briefs in
SUPPORT of race preference at the expense of AsAm
students.

Wouldn't you
PLEASE re-examine your policy so that we can form a UNITED FRONT to win
the COURT battles? Please don't turn your back on your own people?
80-20 shall be at your disposal, if you want to talk. You will be our heroes.

Please post your views on
how to induce the above orgs e.g. OCA and AAJC to form a united front
with us on our Poster Board.

Keep 80-20 alive and DONATE. Who else
will forge unity and fight such great battles for you? Forward
to AsAm students.

PS: Many wrote in. This comment from a non-Asian
supporter, W. Scott
Butcher, is particularly notable. "Amen!
As I've said before S.B. - my three daughters (two born in Asia -I'm a retired US Foreign Service Officer) would never have
received such a good education if it wasn't for the Asian students in their
classes - at International Schools in Asia and in schools in the
Washington DC metro area - and the higher educational standards and
competition created by their Asian fellow students. Competition is what
makes America what it is....and should continue to be. Don't penalize
AsAm students for their achievements!"

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

"Let's
hope that day is getting closer. . . the Supreme Court has
allowed schools to pursue diversity
on campus in what it called a "holistic" way. Now we see that in pursuit
of diversity, schools treat some minorities as less
equal than others based solely on race. Nothing
holistic-or constitutional-about that." (emphasis
added by S. B.)

Today, NY Times, nation's
most prestigious liberal newspaper, came out with this op-ed article: "Is Harvard Unfair to AsAms?",
written by Yascha Mounk who teaches at Harvard. He plainly states thatAsian Am. students have been racially discriminated just
like the Jews of the past years. Read it for yourself:

"NEARLY a
century ago, Harvard had a big problem: Too many Jews. By 1922, Jews
accounted for 21.5 percent of freshmen, up from 7 percent in 1900 and vastly
more than at Yale or Princeton. In the Ivy League, only Columbia and the
University of Pennsylvania had a greater proportion of Jews.

Harvard's president, A. Lawrence
Lowell, warned that the "Jewish invasion" would "ruin the
college." He wanted a cap: 15 percent. When faculty members balked, he
stacked the admissions process to achieve the same result. Bolstered by the
nativism of the time, which led to sharp immigration restrictions, Harvard's
admissions committee began using the euphemistic criteria of "character
and fitness" to limit Jewish enrollment. As the sociologist Jerome
Karabel has documented, these practices worked for the next three
decades to suppress the number of Jewish students.

A similar injustice is at work
today, against Asian-Americans. To get into the top schools, they need SAT
scores that are about 140 points higher than those of their white
peers. In 2008, over half of all applicants to Harvard with exceptionally high
SAT scores were Asian, yet they made up only 17 percent of the entering class (now
20 percent). Asians are the fastest-growing racial group in America, but their
proportion of Harvard undergraduates has been flat for two decades.

A new lawsuit filed on behalf of
Asian-American applicants offers strong evidence that Harvard engages in racial
"balancing." Admissions numbers for each racial and
ethnic group have remained strikingly similar, year to year. Damningly, those
rare years in which an unusually high number of Asians were admitted were
followed by years in which especially few made the cut.

The most common defense of the
status quo is that many Asian-American applicants do well on tests but lack
intangible qualities like originality or leadership. As early as 1988, William
R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions, said that they were
"slightly less strong on extracurricular criteria."

Even leaving aside the disturbing
parallel with how Jews were characterized, there is little evidence that this
is true. A new study of over 100,000 applicants to the University of
California, Los Angeles, found no significant correlation between race and
extracurricular achievements.

The truth is not that Asians have
fewer distinguishing qualities than whites; it's that - because of a
longstanding depiction of Asians as featureless or even interchangeable - they
are more likely to be perceived as lacking in individuality. (As one Harvard
admissions officer noted on the file of an Asian-American applicant, "He's
quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor.")

The contribution Jews made to
American life in the decades after they were maligned as unoriginal, grasping
careerists speaks for itself. There is no reason to believe that today's
Asian-Americans will leave less of a mark. . . . .

. . . It's perfectly fair to consider extracurriculars as an
important factor in admissions. But the current system is so opaque that it is
easy to conceal discrimination behind vague criteria like "intangible
qualities" or the desire for a "well-rounded class." These
criteria were used to exclude an overachieving minority in the days of Lowell,
and they serve the same purpose today. For reasons both legal and moral, the
onus is on the schools to make their admissions criteria more transparent - not to use
them as fig leavesfor excluding some students simply because they happen to be
Asian."
(Emphasis added by S. B.)

A few year back the only AsAm voice in the college
admissions debate was from OCA, AAJC (Washington D.C.),
JACL, AALDEF (Margaret Fung), & APALC (Stewart Kwoh of LA). They as a
group filed repeated amicus briefs in SUPPORT of race preference admissions at the
expense of AsAm students.

2.5 years ago,
80-20 took a survey of 50,000 AsAms on this issue, and OPPPOSED race-preference admissions. How things have changed!
Help to keep 80-20 alive and DONATE. Forward
to AsAm students.

Monday, November 24, 2014

The above is PARTICULARLY true when you donate to
80-20's SELF, Self Empowerment Long-term Fund !
In giving, you will RECEIVE from 80-20 its untiring effort to protect your rights in BIG issues,
that is many times your money's worth.

(A)
Those not having donated, please DONATE! T's
the Season! :-) For a 1st time donor, you must
click on DONATEfirst.

(B) Those having donated about a
year ago with a 5 year commitment, your 2nd annual donation
may be OVERDUE. Click here & go to
the green section for easy payment.
You will find the amount of your donation(s), and the date when you first
pledged.

(B1) If you prefer to send a
check, make it payable to "SELF, 80-20". Mail to

Lynn Chen-Zhang, CPA7596 Oak Shore SouthPortage, MI 49024.

(B2) If you use a credit card, then
following the instructions on the webpage.

How 80-20 Has Served You in BIG issues
this year.:

[1] Learning from NAACP, the
largest civil rights org. for the black community:

80-20 uses the courts to incrementally strip
away the "legally sanctioned discrimination" against AsAm children. An example is the
race-preference in college admissions. 80-20 filed amicus briefs in the
Supreme Courts, helped winning the "close scrutiny"
verdict from the Supreme Court. In working with Ed Blum's
organizations, Students for Fair Admissions, a huge legal battle against
Harvard has started. Our own community is unfortunately NOT
ready to fight such legal battles. So 80-20 does effective leveraging.

[2] Learning from AIPAC, the
most powerful Jewish Am political organization: 80-20 realizes that electing AsAm candidates
can only do so much to grow our political clout. This
is particularly so when our culture
to worship officials has spoiled many of
the elected. They not only didn't serve our rightful interests but
also betrayed us. To established the much needed ACCOUNTABILITY of
elected AsAm officials to AsAms, 80-20 pointed to to former CA
Senator Leland Yee and Assemblyman Paul Fong and promised to DEFEAT
them during the 2004 elections to punish them for their betrayal in the
SCA-5 fight. Promises fulfilled.

Dire Poverty in Financial
Resources

The combined annual budget for 80-20 PAC and
Educational Foundation is $100,000. That of AIPAC is $170,000,000.
Sigh! Recall that AsAm community is relatively wealthy.

The fevor of the first generation to serve its
community can NOT be passed on. After S.B. Woo and his colleagues
have retired from 80-20, we must have at least $1 million/yr to keep
80-20 alive.

80-20 provides a UNIQUE service to you in BIG issues.
"In giving,
we RECEIVE". Please give to SELF to help it
reach $1 million /yr for 5 years by Oct 21, 2015, to keep 80-20 from possibly dying. SELF is 35% behind its
time-schedule. Thank you for giving.